Every day is not peaches and cream.  I wish I could say they were, but that would be a lie.  I can say those day are fewer and farther in between.  I have asked myself if I think that has to do with the amount of time that has passed since the accident.  While I suppose that is partially possible, I don’t quite buy into it.  Instead, I credit the good days with obtaining a new level of spiritual maturity.  In the last year, I have decided to submit to the work of the Holy Spirit and allow the fruit of the Spirit to grow within me.  Part of that means I have learned to trust in a plan other than my own.  Don’t get me wrong.  The first thing I intend to ask God in Heaven is why it was Dalton’s time to die.  Until that is revealed to me, I vow to put my faith in God’s plan.  But I don’t have to like it.

Today began pleasant and ended rather turbulent.  Earlier in the day, I had picked out cute new holiday decorations to replace the fall ones at the cemetery.  In the store, everything was jolly and bright.  Women crowded the aisles of Hobby Lobby searching for the perfect ornaments to trim their trees and wreaths to adorn their front doors with.  Heck, I was caught up in the hustle and bustle of it all myself and selected two large sparkly red bows to embellish my front doors.  I navigated my way to the aisle where the cheerful metal signs are that you stake into the ground.  I watched ladies sift through the selections of snowmen, gingerbread men, and nutcrackers searching for their favorites.  I wondered where they were going to put them.  Maybe by their mailboxes?  The front porch?  Or perhaps in the landscaping somewhere?  “Excuse me while I look for mine,” the voice in my head said.  “I have to find the right one to put where my dead son is buried.”  My friend, Cheryl, suggested the nutcracker guy.  I chose a snowman instead, deciding Dalton would most likely think the nutcracker was freaky looking.

My intentions of switching out the decorations at the cemetery were pretty straight-forward.  Drive out there.  Gather up the glittery leaves and pumpkins, the scarecrow on a stick, and toss them into the back of my car.  Then drive the stakes of the new holiday trinkets into the ground, say a quick prayer, and head back home.  Only it didn’t exactly go according to my plan.  I got out of my car and noticed that recent moisture in the area had invited new sprouts of grass to shoot up all over the top of DD’s grave.  Wonderful.  Now it didn’t look so fresh anymore.  My son’s grave has begun to look like all the other ones out there.  Like it has been there awhile.  How can that be?  He was just here.  I can still hear his raspy voice and feel his hair under my hands as I rub his head.  How in the hell is he under all that dirt and grass?  Much like one of Dalton’s pitches, the anger came in hard and fast.  Soon enough, I had every fall decoration plucked out of the ground… and thrown in a million different directions.  The poor scarecrow was hurled the farthest probably.  I believe some dirt and grass may have gone along with him.  I didn’t care if anyone was watching.  If they were, it was in their best interest to keep their distance too.

I prayed for God to drop me a baseball bat from Heaven.  Obviously, He didn’t.  But that didn’t stop me from wishing for one.  I was really angry.  Angry enough to envision smashing everything in front of me.  I dropped down to my knees in the soft dirt and the anger faded into tears.  That is when the baseball bat memory hit me.  It was the spring of 2012.  I had just bought Dalton a new baseball bat.  He was practicing swinging it in the kitchen.  Not a casual, slow-motion type swing.  I’m talking a full blown Mike Moustakas power stroke.  I told him to go outside to practice swinging because he was going to break something in the house.  He did it again.  In a raised voice, I warned him again not to swing his new bat in the house.  He had already been trying my patience that day with a whole list of other annoyances.  Right then he made sure he caught my full attention before he took one last air-splitting swing, about 3x as hard and fast as the previous ones.  I stopped everything I was doing and took off after him.  I still remember the clanking sound of his bat skimming across my tile floors as though he had just hit a line drive and was taking off to first base.  He was laughing and running at the same time.  I chased him through the dining room, living room, hallway, and across the pool room to my bathroom.  He must have known I was about to catch him because he slammed the sliding glass door to my bathroom in my face.  I could see him high-tailing it past my shower and into my closet.  I threw open the sliding glass door, fuming, and barefoot I rushed in behind him.  Only I didn’t realize my bathroom floor was still soaking wet from when I had given the dogs their baths earlier.  My feet came up right underneath me and I went crashing onto my side and smashed my body up against the vanity.  I was screaming and swearing.  Above my cursing, I could hear the sound of Dalton’s uncontrollable laughter coming from my closet.  I slowly got up and hobbled into where he was.  He was doubled over under my shoe rack laughing harder than I had ever seen him.  Tears were already falling down his cheeks and he was clutching his stomach.  All I could think was, “How do I spank that?”

So I picked myself up off the ground at the cemetery today.  I brushed the loose dirt off my sweatpants and I pushed the stake of the silly little snowman into the new grass. Then I looked up towards Heaven with gratitude and thanked God for another priceless memory.

“Sharing tales of those we’ve lost is how we keep from really losing them.”

~ Mitch Albom, For One More Day